Performance Comparison of Single Code Base Development Tools: Flutter, React Native, and Xamarin

The efficacy of cross-platform frameworks for Android devices has become a concern as more and more companies shift towards them. This paper examines the comparative performance dynamics of the Android application development life-cycle of three leading frameworks: Flutter, React Native, and Xamarin. These frameworks provide write-once, run-anywhere capabilities that aim to streamline development processes while promising to ensure performance and user experience at par with the native applications. Through an empirical approach (using tools such as Android Studio's Profiler and Perfetto), this study develops a standard benchmarking application to measure critical performance/ quantifiable metrics across these frameworks. Experimental results have shown that Flutter offers the best performance due to its direct compilation of native code on Android. On the other hand, React Native has a very low learning curve being dependent on JavaScript which is a famous language among web developers and Xamarin has the most easy setup process because it can be installed as a module on Visual Studio Community. Both subjective (user-dependent) and objective approaches offer valuable insights for developers to select a framework that can align with the organizational expertise and project needs.